STACK #186 Apr 2020

FEATURE GAMING

With 15 numbered games in the series – plus several spin-offs and sequels – there’s a lot of story being told across the world of Final Fantasy. Games in the franchise have generally been fairly self-contained story-wise, though – and Kitase says that Remake will be just as accessible for players entirely new to Final Fantasy. “It really is designed so that it’s very easy for new players to get into – you don’t need to have played the original game or know anything about the sequels that came out after it.We designed it to be something that would be fresh and exciting and new even for people who have played the original, so everyone coming into the game will have a great experience.”

possible, that’s the main reason we chose it.” Unreal Engine does come with many technical advantages as well, and the end result on the PS4 Pro is a truly stunning achievement in graphical terms. The team behind Kingdom Hearts 3 , which started development at Square Enix around the same time, were able to help tweak Remake to perfection. “After Kingdom Hearts 3 was out, we had a lot of the programmers from their team come over to the Remake team for the final leg of development, the optimisation and final polishing stage. The experience they had with finishing Kingdom Hearts 3 on the same engine really came in handy for that final push.” It should be noted that we’re not getting the entire story in this remake. Faced with the challenge of telling the game’s story with a much more epic scope, Kitase decided to split the game into several instalments. It’s not yet known how many there’ll be – if Kitase knows, he’s not telling - but this first episode of Remake does stand on its own as a complete story. “Compared to the original

were well aware of the love fans have for the original game – he was the director on the 1997 version, after all - and the expectations that they’d bring to this reimagining of it. “The reason why it took so long is that it’s such an important game,” Kitase says. “There are such high expectations towards it that we really felt we had to do it right. We wanted to get the gameplay design and the graphics right where they needed to be, to make the version of Final Fantasy that we wanted to give people. We had to do a lot of trial and error before we reached a standard that we were happy with, and obviously that takes a lot of time. If you were going to be satisfied with ‘sort of okay’ we probably could have developed the game much faster. But we don’t want to give people ‘sort of okay’, we want to really give them the Final Fantasy VII they’ve been expecting for such a long time.”

Final Fantasy VII , we’re actually only covering the original story up until the escape from Midgar in this game,” admits Kitase. “But it’s really such a large volume of content that it’s a fully-developed story in its own right. We’ve also done a bit of tweaking at the end of that story to make it feel more like a climax and really work as a standalone. Of course, it’s the first part of a bigger story, but it works in its own right.” The playable

a certain approach that can be taken with them which

opens them up

to take massive damage – these are

hidden, by the way, you have to work out the right approach for each different enemy. Switching between different characters to

Switching between different characters to find that right approach is part of the core combat experience

characters in Remake function substantially differently to their turn- based originals, as now you’re playing in real

find that right approach is part of the core combat experience. With the original, as a turn-based game, you had a lot of time to think about strategy. You can’t make real

time, able to slow time down to switch between characters mid-fight to use their unique abilities. “We wanted to make it a more directly controlled, action-like game,” Kitase explains, “but we still wanted to keep the idea of you needing to control all of the characters. So, we’ve made it so you can’t just win by only ever using one character and then ignoring the others. You have to think about which character is the best to use in each situation and switch between each of them as you play the game. Each enemy in the game has

time combat as detailed and in-depth as that. But we still keep that balance of the strategic aspect with the action gameplay, we really wanted to have that depth to it.” All up, Final Fantasy VII Remake took over five years to create and polish to perfection. But it comes after many more years of fans pleading for a proper remake to be done. Kitase and his team

• Final Fantasy VII Remake is out Apr 10

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